1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus having PC card interface for detachably attaching a PC card constituting a predetermined device for executing data input/output, a control method therefor and a control program therefor.
2. Related Background Art
A PC card is widely utilized together with a personal computer (hereinafter represented as PC). The PC card is available in various formats, such as one mounted with a memory device such as a ROM, a RAM or an HDD, or one mounted with an I/O interface such as a SCSI interface or a CSMA/CD (Ethernet: trade name). As an I/O standard for the recent PC card, there is usually employed a PCMCIA (personal computer memory card international association: URL=http://www.pcmcia.org/) method.
For utilizing a PC card, the PC has to be equipped with a PC card interface (hereinafter also written as PC card reader), and a host equipment making access to the PC card has been limited to a PC but the PC card reader is recently equipped not only in the PC but also in peripheral equipment such as a printer and a facsimile.
On the other hand, it is becoming common to utilize an information processing apparatus such as a PC, a printer or a facsimile by connecting with a network such as a LAN.
In such network environment, such information processing apparatus (hereinafter also called a host) can make an access to mutual resources by a specified protocol. Naturally the resource such as a PC card is not an exception and can be accessed not only from the host having the PC card interface but also from other hosts on the network.
In order to share a resource such as a disk (folder/printer) or a printer among the host on a network, there is utilized, for example in Windows (trade name), a resource sharing protocol such as NetBIOS/CIFS (Common Internet File System)/SMB (Server Message Block).
Such resource sharing protocol enables an access control to a host resource in the unit of a file or a folder on a file system or in the unit of a printer, from other hosts. In such operation, it can set different access levels to a specified host resource, such as enabling or inhibiting an access by a specified host or a specified group of hosts, or by a user or a group of users, or enabling or inhibiting a readout only. It can also include a user identification such as a password matching.
For example the PC card is a memory device such as ROM/RAM/HDD and is suitably formatted in a file system employed in the OS, an access control is made possible in the unit of a folder or a file on such file system.
However, the PC card is not limited to such memory device, and is not necessarily used in a format of a specified file system. Therefore, a resource sharing protocol such as CIFS(SMB) can only achieve an access control on a PC card such as a disk (folder/file) or a printer, and there is now known an access control system capable of achieving an access control at the level of PC card itself and comprehensively usable in PC cards of various formats.
Also the PC card can be freely detached or attached even when the host is in an active state (hot swapping), so that the user can freely change the PC card to a necessary one during the operation of the host. In the prior technology, when the PC card is changed, the user has to manually set the access control based on his discretion (though the access control is restricted to a case where the PC card is a memory device such as ROM/RAM/HDD as described above), and the PC may be continued to be used in a dangerous permission setting in certain cases.